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Hi everyone, I think I have a good idea that could help the piano community...both teachers ands students. I was originally thinking this could be business venture, but now I really don't care about the money. I really want to just add some value to the piano playing community and do something worthwhile with my time. I could talk for hours about the details, but I'm going to try and be brief while explaining the idea below. I'm looking for feedback on the idea and ideas to make it better.

Who am I?I am an adult piano student who has been playing the piano for 2 years. I absolutely love it and am fortunate to have an amazing teacher who has helped me tremendously.

I have also been a business analyst for 15 years specializing implementing process improvement initiatives in the business sector.

Never having enough time in the day, I constantly mix these two aspects of my life to achieve as much effeciency in my practice as possible.

My Eureka Moment I sometimes torture my teacher by constantly asking "why". Here's an example...I used to practice the 12 major scales every day. I do them to improve my fingering, my timing, touch, and it helps me be comfortable with any key signature.

It was taking too long and I eventually stopped doing it. Then, I did an analysis of 4 repertoire books I had and realized that 85% of the music was in only 5 or 6 keys. Now I only practice those keys and saved myself a lot of time. As time goes on, I will add more keys as the likelihood of running into music that requires those key signatures.

Another quick example...trill practice. Why practice a 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, 1:6, 1:8 with every finger combination when 95% of what you see in the music I will play in the next 5 years is 1:2,1:3,1:4 with 2,3 fingers.

The idea What if I had access to data about all the major pieces of music I will most likely play in the next years? If I knew a lot of information about these pieces and could build an exercise routine that was perfectly suited for what I wanted to play in the next year, two years, etc. In other words, why play the whole Hanon book while 90% of it practices technical skills I won't encounter in real music for another 5 years?

The solutionCould we collectively, as Piano World members, contribute to an online database and enter data about the 1000 - 2000 pieces we commonly play in the first 5 -10 years of learning piano. We could tag each piece with data about the key, time signature, tempo, and all the different technical challenges that make that particular piece challenging.

Then, with this data, we could do two things:1) analyze the collection of music and identify the patterns of technical challenges that seem to crop up often. I'm guessing, like so many other things, 20% of technical challenges will tend to appear 80% of the time.

We could publish an analysis and guide to suggest what technical exercises to practice and what not to bother with. It could be organized by "1st year students, year 2-3, etc...)

2) Search for pieces that have certain technical or musical challenges.

If I were a professional musician, I wouldn't care about this...I would just practice 8 hours a day and learn everything.

If I only have an hour a day to practice, I do care about this. Why not focus on the most common technical challenges that will allow me to play the most pieces of music.

I can also see as the difficulty leve increases, these technical challenges would shift to new challenges.

100 years ago, this was not possible because there were no computers or databases. Now it is and I think we should take advantage of the opportunity to analyze the music in order to help us know what to practice.

A few things we would need to get started-someone to manage the project (I would volunteer)-a template to fill out online for each piece of music -a web developer to build the database and web front end-hosting (I'm hoping Piano World would do this)-a steering committee of experts to guide this project onto the right path

I don't have enough time to post extensively, but I think that the difficulty is finding a way to describe the technical difficulties of various works. I think that the word 'Arpeges' or 'trills' is insufficient as a description to describe what's the difficulty in a work with these tags...

Other than that I also think that it's a monsterous work, but I could submit a few ideas here and there, if this gets of the ground!

I think you are right. There could probably be hundreds of types of technical challenges if you get down to the details of which fingers and at what speeds, etc...but I'm hoping a team of experts could come up with a manageable list of items to track that would be useful.

I agree it is a monsterous work, but if you had 2000 people working on it, it would be much easier. I don't know too much about the crowd-sourcing model, but I think that is what it needs. There are probably thousands of teachers on this forum alone who if they could devote an hour, could get this thing done. (along with a communication and organization model.)

Well, if you are asking... here is my opinion. When I was in high school I flunked Grade 10 math 3 times because I hated it and thought I would never use it and I was right--I have never seen a parabola since. To this day I regret every assignment I did not do and every class that I did not attend because I feel... well... stupid. The idea of learning is to stimulate the body, mind and soul and to continuously re-wire the brain. We all want to stay sharp well into our 90's if we can! I personally don't support your idea because I don't want to promote a "bare minimum" notion, at least not to my students.

That's an interesting take on this. I wasn't thinking in terms of bare minimum...more of efficient use of my limited practice time.

Let me take your math example to illustrate. You clearly feel like you missed out on math and feel foolish for not paying enough attention to it during school even though you haven't run into a parabola since high school. (for me, it's history...wish I had paid more attention.)

What if you wanted to go back and fulfill your need to learn some advanced mathematics to keep your mind sharp. Where would you start? What would you study?

There are so many types of math out there...geometry, statistics, algebra, calculus, discrete mathematics, logic, etc.... If you had 1 hour to study math a night how would you prioritize the math exercises?

I would pick something you are interested in...let's say statistics and then learn the fundamentals and try to apply some statistical methods to something meaningful to you. There are hundreds of statistical modeling techniques but mathematicians would agree that there are some that are much more frequently used than others.

My suggestion would be to start there, learn, those frequently used methods, and then as you learn more...add more models to your studies.

This technique wouldn't make me feel stupid or incomplete...just smart about how I use my time.

I'm not a teacher so I appreciate your feedback. I really don't know what the right answer is...this method is just working pretty well for me and I was curious what others thought.

Music consists of numerous elements, and also the interplay of those elements. It is not so simple that a repository of key data such as key signatures and timed trills would help. How about a different idea: Teachers typically have training of 10 years more or less behind them before even beginning to teach, and some have decades of teaching hundreds of students and seeing typical problems behind them. What if the teachers knew of data they would like to see organized, which your skills might be able to address?

Originally Posted By: dcb

Then, I did an analysis of 4 repertoire books I had and realized that 85% of the music was in only 5 or 6 keys. Now I only practice those keys and saved myself a lot of time. As time goes on, I will add more keys as the likelihood of running into music that requires those key signatures.

While music may be in a given key signature, it modulates. In your two years, have you run into music yet that moves from C major to G major and back, for example? Even simple music tends to move to the 5th degree note, called the Dominant, and back, and often to other related keys. Thus in even a simpler piece marked "Key of G major", you may be playing scales in G major, D major, C major, or the relative minor key E minor. As music becomes more modern, it can modulate to loads of keys.

This is just one example where a teacher's much broader knowledge might isolated different factors where they might think your expertise might be helpful. Are you thinking of something interactive and changeable, where in programmer you could put different factors and statistics together in different ways, as needed?

Mixing two quotes:

Quote:

to achieve as much efficiency in my practice as possible. .... It was taking too long and I eventually stopped doing it.

This is very important. Efficient practice is something valuable a teacher can impart, but it isn't always thought of. For scales, for example, there are various thoughts about them, including how and whether to approach them. There are common patterns and other things. I.e. there may be other solutions to your initial problem of wanting to use your time effectively.

Quote:

What if I had access to data about all the major pieces of music I will most likely play in the next years? If I knew a lot of information about these pieces and could build an exercise routine that was perfectly suited for what I wanted to play in the next year, two years, etc.

This should be what happens within the expertise of a good teacher. That teacher will know what skills are needed, what knowledge is needed (theory etc.), and how pieces relate to this - both directions. The teacher also observes his student, and designs the program around all of these factors. A seasoned teacher is that repository of information. Teachers may use reference and teaching material to help them. I suppose that they can express whether there are needs in this area, and where these needs are.

Make sense. Maybe the database isn't such a good idea after all. I totally get the fact that this is what a good teacher does intuitively, I was just wondering if we could leverage 1) technology and 2) the collective wisdom of the teachers to produce something valuable that could be shared.

By the way, I reread my first post and want to be clear, I'm not suggesting I know anything about teaching or music...I've only played 2 years. I'm just trying to apply some efficiency principles from other industries to music and wanted to get everyone's opinion on whether or not it was a good idea.

There's already a wonderful book for this purpose: The Pianist's Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature by Jane Magrath.

Thank you Minniemay for this recommendation.

OT: Has anyone read "Wisdom, Madness and Folly"? It's about the making of the English Oxford Dictionary. It's similar to the OP's idea: having an extensive group of people researching and making contributing to a project.

Anyway, in the end the project organizer travels to meet a man who made years of worthy contributions. He finds the address and discovers that the contributor is a former army surgeon who is an inmate at an insane asylum (with plenty of hours on his hands to do volunteer research). Truth really can be stranger than fiction.

And it makes me wonder about all of us posting on PW. What secrets are out there... This could be material for a book if the OP is looking for a new book project.

Edit: I've searched online to locate the book "Wisdom, Madness and Folly: the Making of the English Oxford Dictionary" but it seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

I thought maybe you had the subtitle, Anne, because I read The Professor and the Madman, but it's subtitle is "A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford Dictionary." So apparently a different book, but the same subject.

Oooo, I hadn't thought about PW harboring such differsity. . .

Cathy

_________________________
CathyPractice like you are the worst; play like you are the best - anonymous

Without hurting your feelings, I must say I hope this database never comes to fruition.

What would be more useful would be the name of one piece that satisfies any particular technical challenge. But even this would be problematic since acquiring the music is a great part of the challenge. In addition, it would be hard to isolate a technical challenge from its neighboring challenges.

But let's suppose, you wanted to be super-efficient. You might only need one phrase of many pieces to acquire the necessary techniques. An adult might conceivably have the discipline to jump from out of the blue into each phrase. But from a musical standpoint, it would be very unsatisfying for both you and the listener.

You might think that being efficient would give you the ability to play a very difficult piece in a short amount of time. But it's precisely the road that you've traveled that rings through the music. So for instance, a whiz kid can learn to play a Mozart Sonata very quickly but that doesn't mean it will sound interesting, or meaningful. You could just program a computer to play it. So why take the trouble to play it in the first place?

My suggestion to you is to learn how to enjoy exactly where you're at. That's the challenge with enjoyment at the piano. You asked, "Why not focus on the most common technical challenges that will allow me to play the most pieces of music?" Why do you need the most pieces of music? Could you be content with ten tunes per year, for instance?

A professional musician with eight hours per day (very uncommon btw) would still be very interested in efficiency.

There's already a wonderful book for this purpose: The Pianist's Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature by Jane Magrath.

The OP hasn't commented on this post, but this rather extensive work has been recommended over and over again. Also Hinson's book (Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire), which is even more massive. My thoughts - if you want to reinvent the wheel, it would be prudent to take a hard look at the wheels which are already in service.

I'm familiar with the Hinson's book and it is not what I was suggesting. Books are hard to search, databases are easy to search.

The wheel I was trying to build was to have 1000's of teachers pitch in minimal effort to basically describe the technical and musical challenges of the most common pieces. If I wanted to work on my staccato technique, I could search for the pieces within my difficulty level that could give me the opportunity to practice that specific technique.

It could also turn into something like wikipedia but for pieces of music.

When I go to an online sheet music store I can usually filter my search by grade level, but nothing more than that. Wouldn't be cool if I could also search by technical or musical skills.

My original idea was to build something like this on Piano World and then own it collectively and sell it to an online sheet music store. I think that would be a cool feature to have on an online store.

It was just an idea...luckily I didn't waste any time on it. I've heard a lot of critique about why it is a bad idea. This leads me to believe that nobody thinks it is a good idea or has any suggestions on how to make it a good idea. I think I'll move on. Cheers.

I've heard a lot of critique about why it is a bad idea. This leads me to believe that nobody thinks it is a good idea or has any suggestions on how to make it a good idea.

Not necessarily a "bad" idea, but it will run into problems. Different teachers use different repertoire to teach similar ideas. Some teachers prefer studies/etudes for these technical issues, as Burgmuller Op. 100 has done so excellently.

Regarding "levels," it's not an exact science, either. For example, CM labels most books by a certain level, but within a book you're going to have easier pieces and harder pieces. Some books are so diverse, they span 5-6 different "levels." So it may cause problems for students if the piece proves to be too difficult. When you work on specific technique, you actually want the piece to be slightly easier and shorter, so the focus is on perfecting the technique, not the notes, phrases, etc. Of course, some teachers will disagree with that approach, too.

Hello. I found your proposal interesting. I think it is a really neat idea. As a learner I often struggle to find pieces at my level and was fascinated to read about Magraths book (which I bought). I wish it had more details of those which you describe but can see how this would become massive quickly.

I think part of the problem is that each persons skill level varies so significantly on each technical item that it would be hard to categorize things. For instance I am studying for grade 5 RCM. There are some things that give me more trouble than others (like most people I imagine). How could one classify then my current ability and then figure out getting to the next level. I think only a teacher can past a certain point. It may be hand position, fingering, posture, etc. A teacher can assess the issue underlying the difficulty and get the student to focus in on that.

I am not a teacher but can see how individual teaching and learning an instrument is. I'm wondering if the varied method books cover this in the early stages. They each teach a skill at a time and have a piece or two to practice the new skill.

I would have contributed to this if I could. It makes sense at a certain level and I liked your approach. Perhaps it is just an idea before it's time?

If you were really interested in this you could review the methods, studies, different exam systems and how they grade materials and then see what conclusions you draw.

Your idea is excellent, and the resulting 'product' will be helpful for many people!Please donÂ´t become discouraged by argues against such project pointing out upcoming difficulties. Of course there will be difficulties. If the project would be an easy one, it would already exist.And I think that nobody should seriously expect that a database like this would limit the musical experience of a student. Instead, it will be as you said: it will make the path to musical experience more effective. For everybody without a _good_ teacher (and we all know that not every teacher is a good teacher) even much more effective. The existence of a good database does not ask anybody to rush through the work in an unqualified manner. And there will be no need to claim to be absolute or perfect or of mutual consent in all detailed content of the database.

So, if it is not possible to right away now attract some â€śteaching attributes quality supervisorsâ€ť for the project, then come back and invite for it when the database structure and the template are already designed.I am sure that the database will be filled with data and become used, once it exists.Maybe itÂ´s worth to first post your question on the Adult Beginners Forum and search for a database specialist there. The adult beginners usually work in jobs outside of the music business and you will have a good chance to find there some professionals who could bring in the missing IT knowledge.

pianoloverus
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Instead of all of the above, why not just use one of the recommended series of repertoire books for students. They will have done the work for you by choosing appropriate pieces both musically and technically at each level. After working through one of those books one usually reaches a point where knows enough to be able to select appropriate pieces.

A good teacher will be able to tell you what technical exercises/pieces are appropriate at each stage of development.